FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Contact:  Robert Preston, Jr.,
              912.260.4276
              robert.preston@sgc.edu

Former SGC Assistant Football Coach Vince Gibson Passes

Vince Gibson, a former assistant football coach at South Georgia College who went on to coach at both the Division I and professional levels, has passed away at 78 years of age. For the last year, Gibson had been battling Lou Gehrig’s Disease. He succumbed to the disease on Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2012.

Coach Gibson was an assistant coach under then-SGC head football coach and athletic director Bobby Bowden, whose head coaching career began at the Douglas, Georgia, junior college. Gibson was coaching at a high school in St. Augustine, Florida, when Bowden paid him a visit and offered him a job at SGC. He accepted the position – the first college coaching job of his career. Gibson often joked that Bowden brought him to Douglas simply to coach the basketball team, which Bowden had coached the year before Gibson arrived. Under Bowden’s leadership, the basketball team won just a single game. Bowden convinced Gibson to come to SGC, and he remained with the Tigers for three seasons (1956-1958). At the end of the 1958 season, SGC ended its football program, which sent both Gibson and Bowden into the job market in search of employment.

Just about everyone knows how Coach Bowden fared. Gibson didn’t do so badly himself. Gibson ended up as an assistant at Florida State University; he was instrumental in bringing his friend, Bobby Bowden, to Tallahassee as an assistant. (After leaving FSU, Bowden would return several years later to take over the head coaching position.)

Gibson landed head coaching jobs at three Division I programs over the course of his career – Kansas State, Louisville and Tulane. Awards include Big Eight Conference Coach of the Year (1970), and induction into both the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame and the Kansas State University Athletics Hall of Fame. Coach Gibson left college coaching with a 75-98-2 record.

Gibson later coached the New Orleans Night of the Arena Football League for one season, in 1992.

In recent years, Coach Gibson visited the SGC campus several times for the annual Bowden Reunion. He was always in good spirits and enjoyed spending time with Coach Bowden and his former players. Gibson was also present in Jacksonville, Florida, on Jan. 1, 2010 for the Gator Bowl, Bowden’s final game as head coach of the Florida State Seminoles.

Gibson also penned the foreword to Jim Bowen’s 2008 book, Bobby Bowden: Memories of a Legend and His Boys from South Georgia College. In the foreword, Gibson writes that coming to SGC was one of the best decisions he ever made in his coaching career.

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About South Georgia College

South Georgia College (www.sgc.edu) was founded in 1906 and is located in Douglas, Ga. The college's environment gives students exceptional opportunities for interdisciplinary study and close collaboration with faculty. With over 20 majors and transfer opportunities, South Georgia College provides the finest education possible to the citizens of its service area.